Businesses can now participate on Google+ with brand “pages”

Google is beginning to roll out "pages" for Google+, allowing businesses, …

Google announced on Monday that it is adding a "pages" feature to Google+, allowing businesses and brands to join its homegrown social network. The new feature closely resembles Facebook's own popular pages feature, giving businesses a reason to care more about the growing Google+.

So far, only individuals have been allowed to make a Google+ profile; this was first invitation-only, but later opened to everyone in September. Google was originally very strict about users being 100 percent clear and honest about their identities on Google+, though the company recently made some changes to allow pseudonyms.

From what we've heard from our social media acquaintances, Google+ is beginning to be considered the next big thing in the industry, and Google just took one of the first major steps to make sure social media pros are paying attention by launching its pages feature. Any group, business, band, or brand will be able to create a page as a sort of profile. Individuals can add pages to circles, and the people behind pages can post links, hold virtual "hangouts," and more.

Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra noted that users can "hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour," while businesses can "find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello."

There are a limited number of pages already built for the launch, including the band All American Rejects, popular mobile game Angry Birds, basketball team Phoenix Suns, and Japanese car maker Toyota. Google said that anyone will be able to create a page "soon," and it appears that the feature is now ready according to Google's Dave Besbris.

Google is also implementing a related feature called "Direct Connect." Doing a search for "+toyota," for instance, will take you directly to Toyota's Google+ page. The feature doesn't appear to work for individuals, however. Direct Connect is also being rolled out incrementally, as Google said it doesn't yet work for all pages.

UPDATE: The original article suggested that the ability to create pages would roll out over time, and the feature wasn't available at the time it was written. However, we have verified that users can now create pages—the capability was switched on shortly after this article was published.